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Approximately one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.

“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”

With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.

“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push

In August they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.

Space Mission Blueprint

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta